For the background see IPCC Censorship. It is not the first time I am censored because of my mathematics: In Dec 2010 my own university KTH under massive media attention burned one of my math books including some analysis of basic climate models, an event which I have documented as KTH-gate.

The last time a math book was burned was in 1632, then with the motivation that the book was "vehemently suspect of heresy". The suppression of scientific mathematical analysis by KTH thus has historic dimensions and the motivation was also the same.

Political correctness is not a virtue of science and in combination with active suppression of scientific discussion and burning of math books, it is could be viewed as alarming, maybe showing the real meaning of climate alarmism.

The fight against climate change will require deep changes in the Belgian energy system

It is urgent that Belgium also develops a long-term political vision enabling it to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% between now and 2050.

This long- term policy must include efforts in all sectors (industry, electricity production, households and transport).

It must therefore also be perceived as an opportunity for Belgium to reduce its energy dependency and increase the safety of its supplies.

Belgium currently imports almost all its primary energy sources (oil, gas, coal and uranium) and this puts the Belgian economy at the mercy of fluctuations in world raw material prices and the expected rise in the costs of fuels as a result of their increasing scarcity.

Oil dependence and the associated geopolitical tensions are well known. Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel and has no place in a low-carbon economy.

As for nuclear energy, it has proven a source of insolvable problems (in terms of waste, in particular), unreliable, very expensive and dangerous. Terrorist threats only reinforce the risks. Nuclear energy is also unable to compete with other sources of energy without the backup of enormous subsidies.

No questioning of this verdict is allowed, not in Belgium and neither in Germany, where the complete reformation of society demanded by Greenpeace has already started.

The following questions present themselves:

Is EU a green peace project?

Is suppression of freedom of speech the solution of the EU economic crisis, with inspiration from the Chinese economic wonder?

PS From the shocking report to Greenpeace by van Ypersele, preparing for a totalitarian EU:

A rise in sea level and temperature could cause serious difficulties at certain tourist destinations.

Winter sports resorts in the Alps could be affected by a serious lack of snow, particularly at low altitude.

In Belgium, snow on the ground could become increasingly rare but there would be plenty of grey sky and rain in winter.

Initially, agriculture would not be damaged and certain crops could even profit from a small heat increase.

In terms of the 21st century and for Belgium, the initial effects of climate change will probably be relatively limited.

The projected lack of snow in the Alps gives Sarkozy the mission to command the people to get green.

The catch is now that in blackbody radiation the resistive force is small which means that

there is an interaction between the swing and the forcing as in (ii): Under increasing forcing the amplitude of the swing increases until the energy of the radiation balances the energy of the forcing, with the swing acting as reservoir of (heat) energy.

In other words, under increasing forcing a blackbody heats up until the radiance balances the energy of the forcing.

The interaction between the swing and the forcing can be turned around so that the resistance acts as input forcing and the exterior forcing is considered as the outgoing forcing with the swing acting as an amplifying resonance board allowing considerable output under small resistive forcing (from the strings of a piano or guitar).

In this perspective, there is a cut-off of high frequencies in outgoing forcing, which can be understood as an inability of the resonance board to amplify sufficiently high frequencies.

The basic idea is to understand blackbody radiation in an educated way as a wave mechanics phenomena and not in a primitive way as a particle mechanics phenomenon of massless photons streaming in an out.

A blackbody in equilibrium with some forcing radiates what is absorbed. What is then the distinction from reflection which also sends out whatever comes in?

Yes, you are right: In reflection there is no swing acting as a recervoir of heat energy, which can change under changing forcing:

A blackbody absorbs the incoming waves into its interior (into the swing) before radiating out what is not stored in its interior recervoir.

A reflecting body simply sends back what comes in without changing its interior state.

A blackbody thus represents real interaction between matter and light/radiation (electromagnetic waves), while in reflection there is no such interaction.

The beauty of many blackbodies interacting by radiation, as opposed to many bodies interacting by reflection, is that the internal states of the blackbodies become harmonized to the same common temperature, while the reflecting bodies keep their initial temperatures.

You may compare with the following student reactions to teaching:

The student understands, absorbs and re-emits what the teacher says.

The student does not understand anything, absorbs nothing and only repeats like a parrot what the teacher says.

It is clear that 1. is more interesting than 2., that blackbody absorption/emission is more interesting than reflection.

We are very happy to have this opportunity to bring together scientists and some politicians (we hope) and get some useful and interesting discussions.

No official invitation by SEII followed. Instead the following letter was sent on August 22 by Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Vice-Chair of IPCC, Membre de l'Académie royale de Belgique, on mission in the US, to Fondation Universitaire:

The effect of the letter was that the SEII/Fondation Universitaire seminar was cancelled, stopped, censored. IPCC managed to suppress questioning of the science presented by IPCC, by a forceful intervention by one of its vice-presidents.

What to say about this? Well, I am not surprised. I read that the burning of my mathematics book by KTH supported by media and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (documented as KTH-gate), is now used to motivate to also mute my voice.

But why these hysteric reactions from IPCC? There must be something in what I am saying (and/or Fred Singer), which is very dangerous to IPPC.

But will van Ypersele succeed in preventing IPCC from collapse under scientific scrutiny?

To burn books because they contain some incorrectnesses would be an overwhelming task: All books contain something which is incorrect. The only real reason to burn a book or suppress an oral presentation is that what is presented is correct, but unpleasant to some.

Why am I not surprised by this disreputable action of this IPCC officer.After all, we know from Climategate emails that these people will go to any length to suppress scientific dissent. Even to libel and to use bald-faced lies.

Of course, I am not supported by fossil-fuel industry. That is complete nonsense and invention

My Europe visit is paid by the Ettore Majorana Foundation -- to give an invited talk at a climate conference in Erice. I am using the occasion to accept additional invitations to speak (without lecture fees) at the Univ of Hamburg, Imperial College, Univ of Paris - Jussieu, and of course at the KNMI in De Bilt. By happenstance I was also invited to address 100+ engineers in Zurich.

Our IPCC colleague van Yp also questions my honesty. Well now -- the IPCC has been using me as a scientific reviewer, I publish regularly in peer-reviewed journals and am an elected Fellow of several scientific societies. So there must be some who disagree with van Yp.

PS2 The cancelled meeting will resurface as a strictly private meeting at a strictly private location after a strictly private invitation of a strictly private group of guests through a strictly private letter. Hopefully these precautions will make it impossible for IPCC to stop the discussion...but there are some strange 1984 vibrations...

PS3 The following letter from Founding President of SEI Michel van Hecke to meeting organizer Henri Masson, exhibits political correctness in full swing suppressing academic

torsdag 25 augusti 2011

The idea of light as a stream of particles or photons has been questioned and still is:

Lamb: Only a comedy of errors and historical accidents led to its popularity among physicists and optical scientists.

Moret-Bailly: Quantum electrodynamics corrects miscalculations of classical electrodynamics, but by introducing the pseudo-particle "photon" it is the source of errors whose practical consequences are serious.

Xavier-Borg: "All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question 'What are light quanta?' Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken" (Einstein, 1951). Sixty more years have passed, theories have been revised and updated, new technologies have surfaced, and yet it seems that nobody has had the guts to tackle this challenging issue again. Scientists seem satisfied enough reciting the wave-particle duality.

In Mathematical Physics of Blackbody Radiation I analyse a wave model of radiation and derive Planck's law from a principle of finite precision computation as an alternative to Planck's original derivation based on particles or quanta.

The basic idea is that atomic or molecular vibrations of a radiating body must be coordinated to deliver a coherent signal, like a swarm of crickets oscillating in unison, and that the required coordination requires a certain temperature to be effective.

Radiation is in this perspective an emergent phenomenon resulting from coordinated in-phase oscillations by many atomic oscillators , and not as in a particle model the result of photons emitted by particles without phase coordination. '

Recall that many out-of-phase oscillators cancel each other and emit nothing.

The primitivism of the particle model of radiation as streams of photons, has made it very popular, but there is little scientific evidence that it describes physics better than phlogistons.

There is no reason that all observed phenomena of radiation including absorption, emission and transmission cannot be explained from wave mechanics without particles. This was the view of Schrödinger and the late Einstein.

onsdag 24 augusti 2011

The wavelength of IR light from the surface ranges from about 5 microns to about 50 microns. The space between molecules at atmospheric pressure is about a tenth of a micron. The size of a molecule is about .0002 microns.

To explain IR by photons does not make sense. If you read my treatise on blackbody radiation or my Sky Dragon article, then you will find IR as a collective wave phenomenon involving many atoms which may give a better picture of the physics than mysterious giant photons being captured by miniscule atoms.

The idea of blackbody radiation as a collective phenomenon is also presented in the blog post

... I’d like to propose a strengthening of the skeptic argument that downward longwave radiation or DLR, popularly called back radiation, cannot be held responsible for warming the surface of the Earth.

... what I’m claiming is not that there is no back radiation but that the only sense in which back radiation warms the Earth is the same sense in which a block of ice next to you warms you.

Perhaps part of the reason for his (Claes) skepticism is the belief that a purely reductionist approach is not the best way to approach physics. If so, he is in good company (even if many do take vigorous exception).

How far should we go when we lose the back radiation terminology ? We will have to throw out Kiehl & Trenberth, Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget, 2/1/1997. AR4, FAQ 1.1, Figure 1, p. 96.

And since The term “radiative forcing” has been employed in the IPCC Assessments to denote an externally imposed perturbation in the radiative energy budget of the Earth’s climate system. (TAR, ¶6.1 Radiative Forcing, ¶6.1.1, p. 353), we will have to throw out radiative forcing, too.

You (Judy) imply we should rely on radiative transfer instead. 8/13/11, 10:10 am. Yet, the uncertainty in RF is almost entirely due to radiative transfer assumptions. AR4, ¶2.3.1, p. 140.

Your recommendation looks like throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater.

I endorse your notion to throw out back radiation, but don’t stop there. We should return to the lost art of estimating climate with a thermodynamic model. In that domain, heat is a flow variable, the greenhouse gases are a variable, passive resistance, and feedback can be modeled rationally and productively.

There may be more comments to be high-lighted, but the above capture some essence.

In any case, the net result appears to be that "back radiation" has now passed best-before-date and can be put into the wardrobe of pseudoscience together with phlogistons and luminiferous aether.

How much of CO2 alarmism based on back radiation, will have to go the same way?

lördag 13 augusti 2011

Back radiation is a phrase, one that I don’t use myself, and it is not a word that is used in technical radiative transfer studies.

The argument is made technically from the spectral infrared absorption and emission of CO2 and other gases.

Lets lose the back radiation terminology, we all agree on that.

This is a stunning revelation, because CO2 alarmism is based on massive back radiation as the carrier of the greenhouse effect. If back radiation is a phrase, so is CO2 global warming. A phrase, not science. The difference is huge.

What made Judy change her mind? Was it the debate on her blog on my chapter in Slaying the Sky Dragon showing that back radiation is not physics, because it is unstable?

The Down-welling Long-wave Radiation (DLR) flux (W.m-2) is defined as the thermal irradiance reaching the surface in the thermal infrared spectrum (4 - 100 µm). It is determined by the radiation that originates from a shallow layer close to the surface, about one third being emitted by the lowest 10 meters and 80% by the 500-meter layer.

The DLR is derived from several sensors (METEOSAT, MSG) using various approaches, in the framework of the project

Down-welling Longwave Radiation (DLR) Flux is one of the most important components of the surface energy balance over land and may be defined as the thermal irradiance reaching the surface in the thermal infrared spectrum (4-100μm).

DLR is directly related to the greenhouse effect and its monitoring has an important role in climate change studies (Philipona et al., 2001). Other applications include meteorology (land applications) and oceanography (air-sea-ice interaction studies).

However Radiative Transfer Models (RTM) may be used to estimate DLR from atmospheric profiles (temperature and humidity).

We read that DLR cannot be measured directly, only through models with temperature and humidity as input, while it is directly related to the greenhouse effect. We are also invited to watch movies of DLR hitting West Africa in the AMMA project.

torsdag 11 augusti 2011

CO2 alarmism feeds on an idea of massive backradiation or Downwelling Longwave Radiation DLR from the atmosphere to the Earth surface, about 330 W/m2 to be compared with 170 W/m2 absorbed shortwave radiation from the Sun.

DLR thus triples the radiation from the Sun to an alarming 500 W/m2 hitting the Earth surface. This should make it possible to boil eggs on the bare ground, but since this does not work out, we ask: What is the evidence that there is massive DLR?

The answer by a CO2 alarmist is: DLR exists because you can measure it, e.g. it by a pyrgeometer:

a device that measures the atmospheric infra-red radiation spectrum that extends approximately from 4.5 µm to 100 µm.

Here is how it works according to Wikipedia:

The atmosphere and the pyrgeometer (in effect the earth surface) exchange long wave IR radiation. This results in a net radiation balance according to:

The value for S is determined during calibration of the instrument. The calibration is performed at the production factory with a reference instrument traceable to a regional calibration center.[1]

To derive the absolute downward long wave flux, the temperature of the pyrgeometer has to be taken into account. It is measured using a temperature sensor inside the instrument, near the cold junctions of the thermopile. The pyrgeometer is considered to approximate a black body. Due to this it emits long wave radiation according to:

From the calculations above the incoming long wave radiation can be derived. This is usually done by rearranging the equations above to yield the so called pyrgeometer equation by Albrecht and Cox.

Where all the variables have the same meaning as before.

As a result, the detected voltage and instrument temperature yield the total global long wave downward radiation.

So now we now how DLR is measured. Does this mean that DLR exists as a physical transfer of energy from atmosphere to Earth surface? No, it does not as explained as myth of backradiation or DLR. We recall:

A pyrgeometer measures a net transfer and then invents DLR by adding the net to outgoing radiation according to Stefan-Boltzmann for a blackbody emitting into a void at 0 K.

We see that a pyrgeometer does not measure DLR directly but invents it from the formula

E_in = E_net + E_out,

which is supposed to result from E_net = E_in - E_out expressing a Stefan-Boltzmann law of the form

E_net = sigma Ta^4 - sigma Te^4,

where Ta and Te are the temperatures of atmosphere and Earth surface. But Stefan-Boltzmann's law is not described this way in physics literature, where it instead takes the form

E_net = sigma (Ta^4 - Te^4),

which does not allow extracting DLR as sigma Ta^4.

DLR and backradiation is thus fiction invented from an ad hoc formula without physical reality, which is not described in the physics literature. Nevertheless there are companies selling pyrgeometers at price of 4.000 Euro, but of course selling fiction can also serve as a business idea. But is it legal to sell fiction as science? As science fiction?

To sum up: Working with fictional differences of massive gross flows feeds alarm, while physically correct net flow does not.

Before investing in pyrgeometer you may ask yourself what in fact such a device is measuring: fiction or reality? Or maybe it does not matter? To help to an answer you may take a look at:

from which Planck's radiation law follows, with more details e.g. here. The radiance spectrum has the form

gamma T f^2,

where gamma is the model constant of the radiation pressure term, f is the frequency and T is a common temperature for all frequencies. For frequencies above cut off the radiance is smaller than the incoming energy, which means that the oscillator is heating up, which reflects heat transport from warm to cold but not from cold to warm.

The model shows generic blackbody radiation in the sense that the radiance is independent of the heat capacity of the oscillator and the value of the constant gamma, in other words independent of the material of the radiating body.

What Judy, or more generally anybody critical of my work, is so overwhelming/pointless in this description?

Claes, I understand perfectly your arguments, I am just not buying it, and I don’t have the time to personally undertake a rebuttal for this for reasons I have previously stated.

Great Judy! From being overwhelmed you now perfectly well understand my arguments. This is progress. But is it credible?

No, it is not. Your argument is that you do not buy my arguments, but this is not science Judy: Science is about presenting scientific arguments, theory, observation, computation, not simply claiming that you don't buy something without telling why you refuse.

You are hosting and supporting an assault on my scientific work, and doing so you must be prepared to come up with scientific arguments, if your intention is to participate in a serious scientific debate.

You cannot simply refer to some unknown undergraduates or to Monckton as some godlike referee above us all. Don't you understand that, Judy?

söndag 7 augusti 2011

David Archer is explaining the greenhouse effect in his class for non-science students on Global Warming at the University of Chicago, which he starts off with:

It is hard for people outside the field to know exactly how much to believe that stuff, right?

The critical moment occurs at time 16:20 of Lecture 5 where Prof. Archer introduces backradiation or DLR from the atmosphere to the Earth surface.

Watch this moment carefully: Notice how Archer pulls backradiation seemingly from out of nowhere and by a long tense silence lets it sink into the minds of the students, without justification only backed by authority. This is effective teaching at a top US university.

The Down-welling Long-wave Radiation (DLR) flux (W.m-2) is defined as the thermal irradiance reaching the surface in the thermal infrared spectrum (4 - 100 µm). It is determined by the radiation that originates from a shallow layer close to the surface, about one third being emitted by the lowest 10 meters and 80% by the 500-meter layer.

The DLR is derived from several sensors (METEOSAT, MSG) using various approaches, in the framework of projects GEOLAND and AMMA.

where Ta is the measured atmospheric temperature (more precisely a frequency spectrum characteristic of the temperature). The algorithm to compute DLR reflects a Stefan-Bolzmann's radiation law (SB) of the form

(1) Q = sigma Te^4 - sigma Ta^4,

where Te is the Earth surface/instrument temperature, expressing the net heat transfer Q as the difference between two-way gross heat transfer back and forth. DLR is then identified with the second term, see also the The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program.

But this form of SB is not found in the physics literature, where instead SB is written as

(2) Q = sigma (Te^4 - Ta^4),

which expresses net heat transfer from warm to cold. In this version it is impossible to single out the term sigma Ta^4 and claim it to represent DLR. In this version of SB there is no DLR, no back radiation, only net heat transfer.

We now see the trick: Rewrite (2) as (1) by an algebraic manipulation and then interpret

the miraculously appearing term sigma Ta^4 as DLR:

By a purely algebraic manipulation a massive physical flux of energy DLR has been created.

With massive DLR it is possible to stir up CO2 alarm.

This trick has fooled a whole world of climate scientists. Does it fool you?

Recall that CO2 alarmism is based on making the effect of something small (CO2) into something big (increase of global temp by 3C), and this inflation is based on replacing small one-way net heat transfer by (the difference of) gross two-way transfer.

It is like creating something out of nothing by writing 0 = 100 - 100, which miraculously creates 100 out of 0.

But this inflation is fictional and is based on an incorrect interpretation of the SB law in the literature. It is surprising that so many people get fooled by the simple algebraic trick used.

PS Measuring temperature by recording frequency spectrum is possible by using SB. But to measure two-way transfer of heat energy is a different issue.

My new derivation of Planck's radiation law has stood the test. Nobody has shown that it is incorrect.

In my version of Planck's law there is no radiative transfer of heat from one blackbody to a warmer blackbody, only from a warmer to a colder. In other words, there is no backradiation.

The reason is that such a process would be unstable and real physics cannot operate with unstable processes. Backradiation thus is fiction without reality.

Backradiation is not described in the physics literature.

Backradiation has been invented out of the blue to serve CO2 alarmism by supplying gross two-way radiative transfer of heat energy back and forth between the Earth surface and the atmosphere, and the instability of this exchange is the root of the alarmism.

CO2 alarmism based on a fiction of backradiation is fiction.

I ask Judy to make her own sum up of the debate and compare with mine.